Plan to teach sexual consent in school

[darleneconnor]

here

They are about to discuss on TWS (sans Mr Wright).

but the lack of empathy involved in not caring what the woman thinks automatically makes that man a psychopath. a dangerous psychopathic rapist.

Dittany: I am not in any way letting rapists off the hook. My point is that promoting a collaborative model of sex means that those men who take advantage of the fact that a woman is unconscious or drunk in order to fuck her will no longer be able to justify their selfish opportunism to themselves or anyone else by claiming that 'she didn't say no so that's OK'.

yes it can work up to a point. Change the word from "performance" to "collaborative" and it's going to work on dispelling the gatekeeper rape myth that "women don't enjoy sex anyway so how's a guy to know whether he's raping or not."

BUt it's only going to work up to a point, because as dittany says, the concept of a man having to notice that a woman enjoys sex will actually blur the lines between rape and sex, when the two are very different things. It makes me uneasy in many ways to talk about a "woman's enjoyment of sex" in the context of rape, because, yes, rape is about power, control and an evil bastard. It doesn't happen by accident.

Still...I do think that it's worth a try, it certainly won't do any harm to get the idea out that a woman knows whether she's enjoying being penetrated or not. Right now, it seems to me that the courts can't accept that. They think, "women are gatekeepers and aren't much keen on sex anyway, so what difference does it make to them whether the man meant to rape her or not". I think the "collaborative" concept will get rid of that myth, and that will be really good.

Yes, to take it back to the school lessons too; surely the idea would be to introduce that idea of seeking active consent and collaborative sexual enjoyment to young people as a way of shifting a cultural mindset about sex, not about rape.

It's true that it wouldn't change rapists attitudes, but it might change their peers outlook on situations that seem abiguous to them now, perhaps making them more likely to step in?

Yes anastasia I think that's it.

Too many otherwise decent, normal people, accept the "he said, she said" version of sex/ rape as reasonable and right. That would be impossible, if collaboration was an integral part of their expectation of what sex is about. If there were no collaboration, then it would be crystal clear to them, that this is not sex, this is rape.

As far as I recall, the reason rape in marriage could not be considered rape was that the woman was presumed to have given consent just by saying 'I do' and taking marriage vows any No after that didn't count, plus women were still suffering from the disadvantage of the old view of married men and women as being virtually the same person in the eyes of the law. Courts deciding cases of alleged rape outside of marriage (which is the only area where a woman could be legally raped during those times) of course routinely disregarded absence of consent and took all sorts of information or allegations about the woman into account (and still do) you would have to be the Virgin Mary to have a verdict of guilty returned against your attacker in some jurisdictions, and even then your chances of being believed wouldn't be high. Which is why I would propose that actually saying Yes would be necessary (and I bet even non-English speakers would have no difficulty understanding)

That's from the legal pov though.

From a cultural pov I think it's important to distinguish between sex and rape. Using collaboration as the standard of measuring consent would mean a woman living in general fear of her husband and afraid of being beaten, who goes ahead and fakes her way through sex, would have no recourse against her H, or would have to argue the meaning of 'collaboration'. A woman who allowed a man to come into her flat and phone a taxi might arguably be accused of 'collaborating' if the attacker claimed that 'everyone knew' that phoning a taxi from the woman's flat means 'having sex'. "Only 'yes' means 'yes'" puts the woman in the gatekeeping role again though, and that is again skating over the thin ice of rape being about sex. Promoting the surprising idea that women are human would go a long way maybe.

"Promoting the surprising idea that women are human would go a long way maybe."

yes, the judge/police/courtroom need to start imagining how they'd feel if they were forcibly penetrated by a penis. Get them to imagine it, as if they were right there having it done to them. Women are just as human as men, it's not "easier" to suffer just because you're a woman.

Math: the legal system is still ysing the 'commodity' model of sex. If the collaborative model (that sex is something people do with one another, not something that a woman wants to withhold and a man wants to take) was widely accepted and understood, that would make the taxi-phoning rapist's argument absurd - as absurd as him claiming that because she let him into her house it should be understood that he could eat all her food and shit on the carpet as well.

Juries believe the most absurd things though. I see your point about the commodity model -- I think rape is seen as a man 'taking sex' from a woman as opposed to a physical and even spiritual assault (spiritual meaning an attack on her spirit and an attempt to dehumanise); however, the idea that women want sex is also used as a defence for rapists. Apparently, wearing revealing clothes or having had sex before some time in your life means you want sex, with that particular man, right then and there.

Maybe the power over another vs. real sex aspect needs emphasis too.

'No means NO is very true and all that, but what should be emphasised is that what you want from a sexual partner is an enthusiastic YES!
IN fact, the first thing any teens or pre-teens should be taught about sex is that it's pleasurable, so if what you're doing is either not enjoyable for you or is not producing obvious indications of enjoyment from the person you are doing it with, then there is something wrong that needs to be addressed immediately.
Occasions when someone is willingly having sex that they are not enjoying that much are pretty rare (all I can think of is TTC sex when you have been TTC for a while and therefore sometimes have sex according to a fertility-boosting schedule whether or not you feel randy).'

SGB - I agree with this - but the commodity side of it will stay as long as we have prostitutes - surely?

LindenAvery: No. People who love to cook, dance or play musical instruments also sometimes are happy to do these things for someone who is paying them to do so (as well as doing the things for pleasure), that doesn;t make cooking or a musical performance a commodity in the way that means anyone should feel entitled to take it from another person or force them to cook or play or dance.

that's a bloody good point about prostitutes LIndenAvery. Rape is a spiritual, dehumanizing assault, not just a physical one, but sex will continue to be regarded as a commodity, something men "get" from women, as long as prostitution is accepted as being a normal way for men and women to interact.

or as long as punters continue to believe prostitutes enjoy their job and are not in it for the money a la those idiots at punternet

Saying they enjoy it is just another way for the punters to clap themselves on the back for a job well done. When they say the prostitutes enjoy it, what they are saying is that women who sleep with men professionally rated their performance highly -- they got a professional review, high marks.

it dovetails perfectly with the "commodity" version of sex. Punters choose prostitutes/men choose women (women have no sexual preferences of their own and are indiscriminate). PUnters expect to get bang for their buck (pleasure) but there is no onus on them to give the woman pleasure (again, perfectly in fittin with the "commodity" version)
I think the only way to get rid of the gatekeeper myth is for society to acknowledge that prostitute/punter sex does not represent normal, healthy sexual relations between men and women. The Gatekeeper-prostitute, who offers sex in return for money, is NOT representative of women's sexuality.

math, no I think they actually believe the women enjoy it. I had a browse on punternet, the review section. Punters were saying things like: "I don't recommend Crystal from Birmingham (name I made up), she was unenthusiastic, she doesn't enjoy her job enough"
Implyin that they believe a woman selling her body is the equivalent of a woman having sex. They believe that these women are nymphomaniacs, who would have sex with them anyway, but might as well get paid for it. IT's delusional

I didn't make that properly clear: adopting the collaborative/performance model as the correct way of looking at sex would mean that sex workers would only do the job willingly and would not be perceieved as being inevitably dehumanized and degraded by it. Because it isn't dehumanizing and degrading for a woman to have sex with lots of different men (unless those men abuse her) - the view that sex (whether for money or for fun) damages a woman's value in some way is the old sick commodity view.

A woman who likes to shag around is having lots of fun and lots of good sex with men she has chosen.

That's so different to a prostitute who is ONLY having sex with that particular man because he's paying her. In a sex industry sex is a commodity, and women are the gatekeepers (sex on the condition they will be paid)

Condemning the cash transaction as abnormal for male-female sexual relations the only well to get rid of this warped gatekeeper mentality

Yes, how do you get rid of the gatekeeper concept, if you have prostitution? As Sakura says, a woman having sex for money, is gatekeeping by definition.

Yes but the gatekeeping view upholds and re-inforces the sense of entitlement doesn't it? That idea that some men have, that women don't really like sex that much anyway, so the only reason she's withholding it from you now, is out of sheer bloody-mindedness, and it's not that big a deal if you penetrate her without her consent because she's used to being penetrated without really enjoying it...

The problem is that men see women's bodies as theirs to abuse and they set up institutions like prostitution or marriage (as it was previously when men had the right to rape their wives) to enforce that right.

Do you honestly believe this dittany? Men don't, IME. Perhaps some misogynist do, and evidently all rapists do, but men? All of us? Or even the majority?